Play as Part of the Regular School Program
Third, the work of the schools should be so adjusted that play will take its place with other subjects as a regular and essential part of the curriculum. This implies not only that play will be given time in the program but also that the same kind of expert guidance will be provided for play as is provided for the other activities of the day. The great value of a varied program is evident to all who have watched the process which has been going on very rapidly in recent years of opening up the school hours so as to include many different types of activity. Play needs not only to be organized as play and to be equipped with proper facilities, but it needs also to be incorporated into the regular systematic program of the school. This statement may be reënforced by extracts from the conclusions reached by the Cleveland survey.
Some reorganization of the educational corps should take place with a view to efficient administration of play and recreation from a broad educational and social standpoint. This would lead to a far greater influence of the school upon the out-of-school life of the community. Through lack of greater influence of the school during out-of-school hours, there is a great social leakage for which the city must pay.
The school is the natural and logical agency for the safeguarding of the great fundamental interests of children and youth. Each year discloses more and more clearly that the school is the one institution we have yet conceived that is best fitted adequately to conserve these interests and utilize them for educational and social progress. Opportunities that came as a matter of course to children a generation ago do not come to many children now unless they are specifically planned for by some agency other than the home. Met wisely by the community, this seeming handicap may, in the end, result in a great and new-found social strength.
Play is more than recreation. If its educational significance is real in the kindergarten period, it is real in every subsequent stage of growth and development. Rightly conceived, play is a most efficient method of education for life, for work, for social service. The fact that we do not yet know how to make full use of play in education need not and should not prevent the utilization of play, to the full extent to which we are prepared, for the tremendous social service it can render.[87]